Beijing hits back at USA robot ban: Humanoid Daily #9

Beijing hits back

You know about the US government’s foreign robot ban?

Well, China’s government is now criticizing those American restrictions directly.

The Federal Communications Commission won’t certify new foreign-made advanced robotic devices—including humanoid and quadruped robots.

Well, shocker: China’s not happy.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning accused Washington of stretching the definition of national security to suppress Chinese companies and said Beijing would take necessary measures to protect their interests.

The immediate effect is a more divided robotics market. American manufacturers get additional protection at home, while Chinese companies gain another reason to focus on domestic buyers and markets outside the United States.

But trade restrictions do not erase patents.

American robot makers may still need to license (or design around) Chinese intellectual property as they scale.

China’s commanding patent lead

Talking about patents …

China isn’t just building a lot of humanoid robots. It is building an enormous intellectual-property position around them.

A new analysis from LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions examined more than 26,000 patent families across three pillars of humanoid technology: interaction systems, physical morphology, and control and planning.

Morphology is the especially revealing category. It covers the bodies, joints, limbs and bipedal movement that make a robot humanoid.

By the end of 2025, China accounted for 73% of the world’s active morphology-related patent families. South Korea had 11%, Japan 7%, and the United States just 5%.

But patent quantity is only part of the story.

Using a measure that considers citations and international market coverage, China’s share of total portfolio strength falls to 63%. The United States rises to second place at 11%. And across all three technology categories, American patents had the highest average quality per patent.

So the simplified version is: China has dramatically more swings, while the United States is has a higher batting average.

But China is also gaining quality through sheer scale—and already leads in total portfolio strength.

Another surprise is where the strongest patents live. Nine of the top 10 organizations aren’t humanoid specialists. They include companies like Alphabet, Nvidia, Samsung, Fanuc and Intuitive Surgical.

Among dedicated humanoid startups, though, six of the top 10 patent portfolios are Chinese. The central question is no longer whether China has a lead. It’s whether competitors can prevent that lead from compounding.

Unitree’s IPO formally launches

There are very few public humanoid robot companies on the planet. Agility Robotics in the U.S. is one, and now Unitree has formally launched its initial public offering process in Shanghai.

We’ve been hearing about this for a while; now it’s official.

The company plans to issue roughly 40.45 million new shares and raise about 4.2 billion yuan … around $620 million US.

Unitree’s biggest advantage may be that it already has a real commercial business. Revenue reached about 1.7 billion yuan in 2025, an increase of 335% from the previous year. The company also shipped more than 5,500 humanoids, representing a reported 32.4% share of the global market.

The timing is complicated, however. Unitree has warned investors that new American restrictions could limit future access to the U.S. market. Its existing robots have already received FCC authorization. Future models may not be so fortunate.

Robots enter summer camp classrooms

Away from patents and trade disputes, researchers in British Columbia have been testing a much friendlier form of human-robot interaction.

A University of Northern British Columbia team deployed a humanoid robot across seven summer camps, where it played educational games with about 150 children between six and 12 years old.

They used a QT robot, originally designed for improving autistic childrens’ learning at home.

The study was designed to move beyond controlled laboratory experiments and see what happens in real classrooms, where children move around, influence one another, get distracted and occasionally decide that the planned activity is not nearly as interesting as something across the room.

Ultimately it seems to be a success.

Researchers found that autonomous social robots could be integrated into these environments and were generally well received.

Number of the day: 73

Seventy-three.

That is China’s share, in percent, of the world’s active humanoid morphology patent families at the end of 2025.

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